House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 7 Review: Dragonseeds Sprout Fire and Blood

This article contains major spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2 episode 7: The red sowing.

It’s been many a month and year since this writer has had the pleasure of reviewing an hour set in the twisted world of A Song of Ice and Fire. But with your trusted Lord Commander of the Sunday Night’s Watch, Alec Bojalad, out of town this week, it’s fortunate to come back for what is handily the best episode of House of the Dragon this season.

The second cycle of House of the Dragon has indeed been as occasionally frustrating as it is often spectacular. A show with a laser-like focus on deconstructing and dismantling the seductive mythology the Targaryen family has built, the Game of Thrones prequel reveals a subtle sophistication for finding the rot hidden beneath all that dragonfire and glory.

Sometimes, though, you need to let a dragon be a dragon. And in House of the Dragon Season 2 episode 7, “The Red Sowing,” Rhaenyra Targaryen finally unfurls her wings in a sequence that is a wonderous horror to behold.

That’s a Nice Dragon You Got There

We get there first by way of the most cinematic moment we’ve witnessed since Meleys met Vhagar above the skies of Rook’s Rest. Upon a lonely sliver of sand and sea, Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, first of her name, greets the first good news she’s had in weeks: a baseborn bastard of the shipyards beneath Dragonstone, the humbly named Addam of Hull, has done what poor Ser Steffon Darklyn could never. He has claimed the dragon Seasmoke as his mount and proven his Valyrian heritage.

Rhaenyra is at first rightly wary while entreating with this stranger. But after hearing his sincere oath of fealty, Emma D’Arcy’s face beams its first rays of sunshine since Rhaenyra’s father was seen still shuffling around the Red Keep. “You have done something, I feared impossible, Addam of Hull, ” Rhaenyra says with a deep sigh of relief. “I am glad of it.”

We should all welcome such happy tidings. On the most basic level, despite the truncated eight-episode nature of season 2, this year’s House of the Dragon has moved at a strangely listless pace, especially after the lightning-swift gait of the show’s first season. It is difficult to put a finger on the cause given that, technically, a lot has happened this year: the heinous murder committed by Blood and Cheese, Aegon II’s rash and swiftly curtailed reign, and of course Rook’s Rest. Nonetheless, it sometimes seems like the show is struggling to create drama between the high points which George R.R. Martin’s faux-historical text, Fire & Blood, lay out for the series.

So here, with the irrefutable evidence of a bastard bending a dragon to his will, there is a genuine game-changing storm that can be exploited for its dramatic weight as news of the deed ripples across the Crownlands. In the moment where Rhaenyra and Addam come to an understanding, we have an image, courtesy of director Loni Peristere, worthy of the tapestries that adorn the season 2 opening titles. But we also have a proverbial bomb going off that upsets the feudal order of the world that Westeros was founded on. And how each character reacts becomes instantly fascinating.

In a clever reversal of what at least Martin’s fictional historians tell us of this turn of events, it is Rhaenyra who immediately embraces the idea of smallfolk, or even bastards, becoming her fellow dragonriders while her beloved son and heir, Jacaerys, reveals a shockingly conservative streak. This creative choice feels right.

Rhaenyra is a woman who knows all too well the worthiness of a bastard—or the worthlessness of a knight. After all, in her heart of hearts she recognizes her first three sons are far less Velaryon than Addam or his brother Alyn of Hull. But beyond this one major indulgence, she’s spent her life trying to play by the rules entrusted to her by her father, even as she’s lost at least three of his Seven Kingdoms to those who never met a rule they couldn’t ignore. There is unsurprisingly dissent in her small council and among the Valyrian-descended keepers of the old ways in the Dragonpit. But by virtue of being a woman attempting to lead a medieval society, Rhaenyra has learned firsthand the impossibility of conforming to society’s expectations.

Yet it is by expectations and social mores alone that Jacaerys can hang onto his birthright. Undoubtedly, some viewers flinched when he referred to Addam and other “dragonseeds” born of illicit nights as “mongrels.” But while the show is intentionally dealing with a loaded term in our modern lexicon, it isn’t so much about Jace revealing he’s a racist as he is a staunch classist. If not for the privileges (and luxury) of class, with Jace being both a princeling and heir to the throne, others would be forced to admit what their eyes plainly tell them: he is no son of Laenor Velaryon. So despite initially coming up with the idea of looking for second or thrice-removed cousins, Jace draws the line at publicly declared bastards becoming dragonriders.

He is afraid of robbing the Targaryens of their mystique—himself especially.

The irony is, of course, that only way to preserve that mystique for future generations, and Aegon the Conqueror’s looming dream, is for Rhaenyra to win this war… and at least from her vantage, democratizing dragonriding is the most sensible play on the board.

A Little King’s Landing Medicine

Her decision echoes throughout Westeros in curious ways. Take for instance, Larys Strong in King’s Landing. When we come upon Lord Larys, the master of whisperers, he is witnessing the Prince Regent Aemond doing arguably his first smart thing since claiming power: doing away with Aegon II’s lickspittles. This actually began when he stripped his friend Ser Criston Cole from an office he was glaringly unfit for. Similarly, relying on drinking buddies to be the Kingsguard is a recipe for disaster. We hear they’re being blamed for the riot from last week, but in truth it’s just a pretext for termination. Unfortunately for these lads, termination from the Kingsguard means the Wall.

But what’s really important in this scene is how Larys consumes the news that a non-Targaryen—in name, anyway—has assumed control over a dragon. In a move worthy of Littlefinger, this Master of Whispers chooses to withhold the bad news from his volatile regent. But in a very un-Littlefinger like move, he then shows genuine empathy for one of the men he serves: young Aegon II, who has become a wretched creature ignored by everyone else in court and cast off on a sick bed of forlorn hope.

What are we to make of Larys attempting to help Aegon recover from his grievous wounds? One could suspect that Larys recognizes Aegon is a fool and easier to manipulate, and hopes to nurse the broken monarch back to kingship. There is clearly no love lost between Larys and Aemond. Yet I don’t think Larys truly thinks Aegon will ever rebuild his authority. We have here one fairly repellent character pitying another. There’s a humanity to both in this fellowship that I never picked up on in the book, but finding pathos in characters who are awful humans like Larys and Aegon, who in turn can see the humanity in each other due to their disabilities, is another shrewd creative choice by the House of the Dragon writing room.

The Sea Snake Needs to Uncoil

It’s good to point sharp innovations out, because there are other areas in tonight’s episode where season 2 fell back on its familiar problems. One such instance is how Lord Corlys Velaryon reacted to learning that his illegitimate son, Addam, has become a dragonrider. Corlys barely hides his disapproval when he tersely congratulates Addam on his unlikely success. He also pressures his favorite bastard, Alyn, to redouble his efforts of hiding his lineage and to not seek a dragon of his own.

This is, for the record, another departure from the source material… and a fairly inexplicable one at that. In Martin’s Fire & Blood, it is plainly stated from all historical sources that Lord Corlys eagerly pushed Addam and Alyn forward as dragonseeds after the death of his wife. Ostensibly the Sea Snake did this because he claimed they were the out-of-wedlock offspring of his son Laenor (Addam and Alyn are teenagers in the book), but it’s obvious they are his own sons. With Laenor seemingly dead—and probably also on the show since Seasmoke would have never countenanced another dragonrider had Laenor lived—the Sea Snake recognizes the need to legitimize Addam and Alyn in order to carry on the Velaryon name and bloodline.

On the series, though, poor Steve Toussaint is asked to play needless shame and estrangement with Clinton Liberty and Abubakar Salim when it would be much more compelling if we saw them adjudicate amongst themselves how best to approach their claims in Rhaenyra’s court—or whether perhaps if Alyn wants to be claimed as an heir after being denied by his father all his life. Instead the dramatic catharsis of Addam and Alyn’s changed fortunes are undercut by manufactured and unconvincing conflict.

At this point, especially in the penultimate episode of the season, we should be basking in the sudden newfound momentum of Rhaenyra’s claim, including for her attendants in the suddenly expanding House of Velaryon. Instead Corlys forcing Alyn to keep his head down drains this subplot of any semblance of joy or excitement.

The Hotel Harrenhal, Check Out Anytime You Like But You Can Never Leave

That last bit could be similarly applied to the entire Harrenhal subplot of season 2. As someone who counts The Witch as one of his favorite horror movies in this century, I love a good Black Phillip reference. So seeing that damnable goat bedevil Prince Daemon’s dreams tonight was yet again amusing. However, this entire season-long layover in the Seven Kingdoms’ most accursed castle remains a narrative misfire for the series.

I do not envy the creative problem season 2 presented for showrunner Ryan Condal and his fellow writers. What little Martin tells us about Daemon’s experiences during this leg of the war at Harrenhal is thin. He apparently was rapidly successful at raising an army in the riverlands,  giving Rhaenyra an unlikely tactical edge after appearing initially outmaneuvered at every turn on land.

Finding something dramatically rich and challenging to do with an actor of Matt Smith’s caliber during what we’re told was a successful bit of statesmanship and Bracken-slaying could not be easy. Unfortunately, turning nearly every Daemon scene in season 2 into a fever dream allegory meant to deconstruct his bad boy image through pop psychology was not the solution they were looking for. It misses the wit and deeply cynical humor of Martin’s storytelling, and faintly resembles an inversion of Game of Thrones trying to invent a similar storyline for Jaime Lannister when they sent him to Dorne in season 5.

One was painfully simple and lurid, whereas this new alternative is filled with nuance and psychosexual horror. Both, however, are attempting to create a narrative for their series’ resident antihero that misses the appeal of that antihero, or the location they’re in. Harrenhal isn’t haunting in House of the Dragon; it’s exhausting. And rather than getting to reveal new layers in Daemon, Smith has been siloed into walking in circles. It is refusing to let the dragon be a dragon.

In this week’s case, that comes about when, like a modern day Republican, Daemon is shocked to learn he is no longer negotiating with an old man but with a new generation who remembers his slights and arrogance all too well. With Lord Tully of Riverrun dead, young Oscar Tully is now the Lord of the Riverlands. Long may he reign. He also has no time for Daemon’s condescension. Nay, the little whipper-snapper puts Daemon into a lousy situation: execute his most loyal subordinate in the riverlands, Willem Blackwood, for following Daemon’s orders or lose the loyalty of the other riverlords.

Daemon sloppily does the deed in a scene that plays false. Someone as vain and obsessed with the trappings of power as Daemon would never hear the complaints or pleas of vassals beneath a godswood, pacing in circles as if he were their equal. The sequence, I suppose, is intended to show how tenuous and shortsighted Daemon’s power over these lords really is, but like so much else of the Harrenhal subplot, it falls flat.

The Red Sowing

Lest this review turn into too many notes, it’s worth saying again that episode 7 seems to be a turning of the tide for a series which has run into sophomore growing pains. While Harrenhal and a few other elements might remain narratively frustrating, the culmination of the “dragonseeds” subplot is not one of them. Nay, it is magnificently terrifying, even with all that smoke.

For weeks, viewers have likely wondered why we have spent so much time with the blacksmith Hugh Hammer or the King’s Landing barfly called Ulf White. Tonight we received confirmation that both are descended from Targaryen stock, albeit in Ulf’s case that comes as a surprise to even him. We also learn they are more sympathetic than their literary counterparts, particularly Hugh, who we discover is the son of a woman who was the half-sister of Viserys and Daemon, making him Rhaenyra’s first cousin. I do not believe that is in the book, but it reminds me of the tragedy of Saera Targaryen, the willful daughter of good King Jaehaerys and Alysanne (Viserys and Daemon’s grandparents), who for her sexual proclivities was banished from King’s Landing and ended her days in a far-east brothel.

Be that as it may, in a rather ingenious bit of plotting the dragonseeds do not just come from the Hull of Dragonstone, but from all over the Crownlands. Rhaenyra plucks potential dragonfire right out from beneath Aemond’s blind grasp.

This is also a turning point for Rhaenyra, who up until this episode has been presented as always making the selfless choice. She begs Alicent to pursue peace, not war, even after her son Lucerys was murdered by Alicent’s hell spawn; she also worries about the plight of the smallfolk and their progeny when she talks again and and again about the “Song of Ice and Fire,” and the coming of another Long Night; she even sends food to the masses she starves with her blockades in King’s Landing.

Yet to even raise a ghost of a chance at standing against Vhagar and the Green Council, tonight Rhaenyra literally feeds smallfolk to the dragons in a desperate search for a unicorn she can exploit amongst their ranks.

What are we to make of Rhaenyra this evening? Before “the Red Sowing,” as it’s dubbed in the book, she pities each of the peasants who’ve come to her castle, thanking them for their courage and empathizing with their plight. For many, she insists, death might seem better than a life of endless toil and hardship. But it seems cold comfort to those who are about to be immolated, and to herself for literally standing by and watching it happen.

Before the bonfires commence, Rhaenyra introduces this nameless rabble of lost cousins and kin, strangers and victims of her family’s legacy (many of whom likely are children or great-grandchildren of rape and the “First Night” privileges of silver-haired kings), to Vermithor, the now second-biggest living dragon in the world. 

Standing before Vermithor in the smoky pits outside Dragonstone, Rhaenyra very intentionally echoes the first poster and still-definitive concept art we glimpsed of House of the Dragon. On that one-sheet, Rhaenyra too stood in front of a dragon in all her regal youthfulness and power. She was a goddess granted divinity by fire—she was also played by Milly Alcock at the time and posed in a way meant to evoke the misleading iconography of Daenerys Targaryen. It’s an image many television viewers adored and cling to still.

Now that pose is echoed on the show, and Rhaenyra is wiser, played by D’Arcy, and more aware of the lie at the heart of the divine image she resembles. She is standing in front of a band of subjects and extended family who will soon die screaming. She doesn’t want to kill any of them. Plus, what she is doing has a bleakly practical logic to it. But she resembles less a goddess than a wraith as she steps out of Vermithor’s path and lets these dragonseeds attempt to sprout into their own power. Alas, for most of them, the only fruit to be tasted in this Valyrian soil is of fire and blood.

Rhaenyra, like us, watches on in horror as Vermithor practically barbecues the entire guest list invited into his home. The sequence is filmed a bit like an R-rated Jurassic Park sequel, with the only sounds being of the dragon’s heavy breathing before raining fire down on the bad seeds.

Fortuitously for Rhaenyra, the two random smallfolk we’ve followed, Hugh Hammer and Ulf White, live long enough to claim their dragons: Hugh binds Vermithor to his will, and Ulf by pure luck is able to tame the far more docile Silverwing deeper in the caverns.

Was Rhaenyra right to feed so many people to this dragon in the hopes of finding a few who would do her bidding? Yes. Probably. In the sense that she is a Targaryen, and is finally acting like a dragon. A dragon does not care if you are a good mother or father, a loving husband or wife, a dutiful son or daughter. A dragon only cares about the power you present—or don’t as you cry into the flames. If Rhaenyra is going to reclaim Aegon the Conqueror’s domain, she must be as ruthless as he was when he lit Harrenhal up like a Roman candle.

… Yet that is the real point of the series, no? All of the Targaryens, even the ones with the best intentions like Rhaenyra, have built their empire on literal fire and blood, death and agony. And the people to suffer most are the smallfolk Targaryens claim as their own children—literally so in the case of Rhaenyra’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Mhysa, the Mother of Dragons, the Breaker of Chains.

It’s an infantilizing and exploitative system, and it is derived by the deadly firepower of dragons. Nothing more.

Which makes the sight of silly old Ulf flying Silverwing above King’s Landing like he’s Sebastian at the end of The Neverending Story so bizarre, and also potentially foreboding for the dynasty. No one would mistake this beer-sodden fool for a god, even with a dragon between his legs. He betrays the mystique which a fellow bastard like Jaecerys guards jealously. 

He also looks like slim pickings to Aemond and Vhagar who attempt to send Silverwing toward the same bone pile as Meleys… until Aemond realizes that Rhaenyra has not one new dragonrider on Dragonstone, but three. Suddenly, our cycloptic friend recognizes he would be heading into a six-on-one fight when you also count Rhaenyra, Jace, and Baela Targaryen. Rhaenyra might have demystified the Targaryens a little bit, but she is more of one than ever before when she makes Aemond shudder. And the regent also betrays the Targaryen lie when he barely turns Vhagar from cruising into a bruising.

At last, Rhaenyra has found seedlings of power that can take root. Mayhaps Team Black, and House of the Dragon for that matter, will be entering their salad days as a result. We can hope.

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